On Thursday, March 29, 2012, a local jury in the 377th District Court of Victoria County, Texas sentenced a local mother, Susan Katherine Stewart, to Life in prison on three counts of Injury to a Child and three counts of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child. Evidence presented during the four days of trial showed that Stewart had repeatedly delivered her two young children to a known registered sex offender, Gerald Graves. Further, the evidence showed that Stewart was repeatedly warned from 2001 to 2005 by CPS officials to keep her children away from Graves.

Graves was convicted in July of 2011 and sentenced to Life in prison for sexually abusing Stewart’s two children. Investigator Angela Martinez with the Victoria County Sheriff’s Office finalized the investigation that began when the two children made an outcry in 2010 about the sexual abuse by Gerald Graves. During this investigation, Martinez determined that Susan Stewart’s parental rights to the children had been terminated in 2007 for failing to protect the children from Graves.

Stewart was then charged with the some of the same acts committed by Graves upon her child, and, while Stewart had no previous criminal history, the jury sentenced her to Life in prison for all counts. The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Johna Stallings and Allison Jones Marek of the Victoria County District Attorney’s Office, and Judge Steven Kemper Williams sentenced Stewart to Life for all six counts on Thursday.